Evel Knievel was, in short, a lunatic. He was a persistent, brave, inspirational Man Of The People with some serious anger issues, a sustained sense of paranoia, and an insatiable greed – but he was still an American hero. With that in mind, director Daniel Junge brings the man’s life story to the screen in Being Evel.

As a documentary about a man whose self-invented profession was attempting ridiculous feats of death- and gravity-defiance, the film itself commits to a jump of its own straight from the 1970s to today and, for the most part, it sticks the landing. The entire story is told through interviews mostly with people who knew Evel personally – friends, spouses, newscasters, the like – bolstered by news footage of his exploits both on the ramp and off. Unfortunately, this unavoidably means an interviewee pool of lots (LOTS) of old white people, and it can get a bit confusing keeping track of who knew Evel how and when. Junge seems to be aware of this, though, and reaches out to a slightly more contemporary audience with asides from current X-Gamers who were inspired by Evel as kids. In a particularly well-placed section, Tony Hawk explains how, when he was growing up, “there was only one action figure, and it was Evel Knievel.”

For audiences who weren’t around to see his stunts on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, the film does a nice job of pacing out anecdotes in chronological order instead of grouping “stunts” and “personal life.” Because nearly all the interviewees were acquaintances of Evel, the film does take on a very noticeable story arc that really plays up the mythology and character development from small-town con man to daredevil superstar to fame-spoiled megalomaniac. Instead of feeling contrived – a film script format molded onto a real person’s life – the story seems convincing, and the fact that most of his friends and family really didn’t like him strikes a thoughtful balance between fanboy adoration and historical skepticism. At its heart, the film is intent on presenting a faithful biography of Knievel the man rather than Knievel the character. Most interesting is its discussion of how quickly he was corrupted by his rise to fame and wealth – how he began to seriously view himself the way his fans did: as an actual superhero. The film comes uncomfortably close to absolution at its end, with a soft-focus wrap-up with his second wife and later friends talking about the lingering effects of innumerable concussions, incessant drinking, and a literal Guinness World Record of 433 broken bones. If you’re a long-time fan of extreme sports, calculated showmanship, or Hot Rod, you shouldn’t need more than the title to sell you on this movie. For others, you’ll still want to see a man who, when told by the federal government that he wasn’t allowed to jump the Grand Canyon, went out and bought a canyon of his own to jump. You’ll want to see a man whose first wife comes to the realization that their marriage was technically a kidnapping. You’ll want to see a man walk onto the Tonight Show stage in a zebra-print suit with a cape and diamond-studded cane. You’ll want to see a man whose action-figure status was revoked when he broke his publicist’s arms with a baseball bat. You’ll want to see a man who attempted to jump 13 buses, crashed, announced his retirement, and then decided to jump 14 buses five months later. You’ll want to see a man who was, in short, a lunatic. Grade: B+

Imagine you are an FBI informant conducting an active sting operation. (Please, suspend the many reasons why you would never do such a thing and just go with me momentarily.) You’re investigating Persons of Interest (POIs) who the FBI feels are a threat to the security of the USA; you’ve moved to the target location, changed your name, and are living in a safe house. You assume security and under-the-radar behavior are of utmost importance; you avoid public wifi for fear of data breaches, you drive different routes to the same location to avoid being followed, and you most definitely avoid telling anyone you know what it is you’re doing. That’s how those things work, right?

Apparently, no. T(error) follows an active FBI informant during an active counterterrorism sting operation in Pittsburgh. The documentarians show his face, his family, his community; they follow him as he sets up the new sting operation in Pittsburgh, show the location of his safe house, and even film the photos and locations of the POIs he’s investigating. The FBI has no idea this is happening. We hear the voice of his FBI supervisor, see the text messages they exchange, and sit in the car filming their meetings in parking lots from afar; while, again, they think no one knows what’s happening in this instance. The breadth of the film’s access is astounding: all I could think for most of the film was, How is the informant not worried about this unprecedented access into the FBI inner-workings? How is no one going to jail for this - or have they gone to jail since the film was released?

As it turns out, the access to the informant, while incredibly exciting, illuminates a terrifying system whereby the FBI targets people within the US who haven’t committed a crime and uses informants to get them to agree to commit one. Not to actually commit one; but to use language that alludes that they might. We meet one of the POI’s the informant is investigating, and we see the tactics used against him as he continually resists the attempts of others to pull him into a terrorism-promoting sphere.

This film begs the question: What is the price we pay for safety? What liberties are we relinquishing under the guise of safety? And, most importantly, who is watching the people who are watching us? It’s terrifying to contemplate the answers. Especially to the last question, as it appears no one is watching the organizations that have systematically gained vast amounts of power and influence especially in the criminal justice system… which feels anything but just, especially in this context.

While I’ve seen many fantastic films at this festival, this is the breakout; this is the film I want to watch again and again. Not because it’s happy or fun, but because it feels like a duty. Citizens should know about the atrocities being committed in our own communities; we cannot protect ourselves if we don’t.

Grade: A

T(error) will have it’s final screening at IFFBoston tonight at 9:30 at the Somerville Theatre. I cannot recommend that you attend it enough. Tickets can be found here or at the Somerville Theatre box office.

Hello again everyone! Here is Part Two of my Independent Film Festival Boston 2015 coverage, and I'm happy to report that this article includes some of the best films I've seen here so far.

H.

H. is a story which takes place over the span of a week or so in the small town of Troy in upstate New York. It is divided into four parts which alternate between two different couples. One is an elderly retired couple named Helen and Roy (Robin Bartlett and Julian Gamble). Helen has a strange obsession with baby dolls, which she calls her “reborn angel” and treats as if it was alive, while Roy is a typical old-timer who just wants time to go drinking and fishing with his buddies. The second couple is a young pair of artists named Helen and Alex (Rebecca Dayan and Will Janowitz) who have their first child on the way. But soon strange things begin to happen in Troy after a meteor seemingly explodes above the town. People begin hearing strange noises, the physical properties of objects begin to change, and some people even begin to go missing. H. is a hard film to classify, falling somewhere between mystery and drama with a sprinkling of horror. But the thing about this movie is that it’s a tease. All these strange things happen, and even if they are interesting or occasionally frightening in the moment, nothing is ever explained. Now, I’m fine with movies which want to keep their events ambiguous and mysterious, but if they do than those events and the people that interact with them need to be compelling enough to stand on their own. And that’s the thing: the events of H. are not interesting enough to stand on their own. To be fair, if I had seen this before the terrifying and intense psychological horror They Look Like People the night before, than maybe I would have liked this film more. Compared to that, this movie seemed extremely tame and extremely slow. But even if I hadn’t, H. is a movie which aspires to the mysterious and ambiguous tradition of horror-mystery but sadly, to use the old expression, its reach exceeds its grasp. Grade: C-

Wildlike

Wildlike opens with a young, troubled girl named Mackenzie (Ella Purnell) at the Seattle airport about to get on a plane to Juneau, Alaska. She’s being sent to live with her Uncle Ted (Joshua Leonard) as her mother, still reeling from the death of Mackenzie’s father, is incapable of caring for her. Unfortunately, where her mother was simply incapable Uncle Ted is abusive, and she soon runs away. After aimlessly wandering Juneau, stealing money and food, she hitches a ride on the Alaska Marine Highway in order to get out of the city. Afraid that her uncle is following her, Mackenzie keeps running and eventually ends up traveling over much of the state, initially alone but later with a man she meet through happenstance named Bart (Bruce Greenwood). Combining a well-written plot with a cast of experienced actors, Wildlike is a touching drama film about two people who start as strangers and slowly come to care for one another. Both Ella Purnell and Bruce Greenwood are excellent in their respective roles, the former as the vulnerable young girl and the latter as the world-weary older man. Because of this and the phenomenal writing by writer/director Frank Hall Green both Mackenzie and Bart feel like real people, and as they get to know each other we as the audience do as well. By the end, the two of them are like old friends to us. Not to mention the fact that the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. The movie was filmed on-location in a variety of Alaska locales, most notably the pristine wilderness of Denali National Park. I enjoyed the film even further as I have a personal connection to Alaska and I have been to many of the same places that Mackenzie travels through. Even if you can tell that the cameras the movie was filmed on were not the highest quality ever, the raw natural beauty of the place makes up for it. Wildlike is a beautiful film, on both a visual and emotional level, and I await its full theatrical release so I can go and see it again. Grade: A

DEATHGASM

DEATHGASM is the story of a teenager from New Zealand named Brodie (Milo Cawthorne). Brodie is a Metalhead. For those of you are unaware, a Metalhead is a die-hard fan of Heavy Metal music. After his mother is institutionalized, he is sent to live with his ultra-conservative uncle and aunt, who treat him poorly because they regard his favorite genre as “the devil’s music”. Brodie’s cousin David is a mean-spirited bully who uses his parent’s dislike of Brodie to justify beating him up. Ostracized at home and at school (since David is a popular jock), Brodie’s only friends in his new town are Dungeons and Dragons geeks Dion and Giles (Sam Berkley and Daniel Cresswell) and fellow Metalhead Zakk (James Blake). Feeling isolated, the group decides to vent their feelings by forming a Metal band called DEATHGASM (because as Zakk says, LOWERCASE IS FOR PUSSIES!!). This catches the attention of Brodie’s crush, a beautiful girl named Medina (Kimberley Crossman). But Brodie quickly finds that he has bigger things to worry about, as DEATHGASM’s newest song turns out to be an ancient satanic invocation. With the town overrun by demons, Brodie must use the power of Heavy Metal to save the day.DEATHGASM is ridiculous, hilarious, extremely gory, and downright awesome. It’s a horror movie and splatter comedy based entirely around Heavy Metal music which does not take itself seriously in the slightest and runs entirely on sheer mayhem and absurd comedy. Featuring everything from literally satanic Metal music, a Dan Brown-style secret society intent on hunting down and murdering DEATHGASM, and Brodie and Zakk trying to kill demons with giant dildos, this is a movie which positively revels in its own insanity. The over-the-top gore and high level of genre self-awareness makes for a rollercoaster ride of violence, comedy, and awesome battles with evil demons. And of course, the movie has an awesome soundtrack with tons of brutal Metal music; the creators of the movie obviously have such a love for the music and it comes across beautifully in the movie. And what makes all of this even better is that the movie is actually exceedingly well-made. The acting is very professional, with the actors giving it their all in even the most absurd scenes and clearly having a whole mess of fun while doing it. The writing is extremely clever, managing to be both play straight and make fun of the typical splatter movie tropes simultaneously. There’s even a little B-plot about Brodie and Medina’s blossoming romance which manages to both really cute and super Metal at the same time. And the special effects, while often intentionally cheesy, look really good, especially when Brodie and company kill demons in extremely bloody and… creative ways. Put everything together and you have a ludicrously fun horror-comedy which is simultaneously a love-letter to everything METAL. Trust me, after you watch this movie you’re going to want to go home and blast Metal music into your ears at the highest possible volume (which is exactly what I’m doing as I write this review). All in all, DEATHGASM is one of the funniest and most fun movies I’ve seen in quite a long time. Grade: A+

This article is part of NUFEC's ongoing coverage of the Independent Film Festival Boston 2015.

Hey film lover type-people! I am also attending the 2015 edition of the Boston Independent Film Festival, along with fellow writer and editor Mary Tobin. I will be uploading one article for each day of the festival; here is my coverage of two films which were shown on Friday, April 24.

The Overnight

Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) have just moved to a new home in California with their young son. They are a loving couple and have a happy life but they have a few problems, such as their lackluster sex life. Alex also has mild social anxiety, and is very worried about having to make new friends in their new town. Therefore, he is very happy that when their family is at the park they are approached by a neighborhood man, also with a young son, who warmly introduces himself as Kurt (Jason Schwartzman). Kurt is incredibly affable and Alex and Emily soon agree to have dinner at his house that night. Once there, they meet Kurt’s beautiful French wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche) and join their new friends in making merry. However, as the night grows longer and things become stranger, Alex and Emily begin to suspect that Kurt and Charlotte may not be as innocent and neighborly as they initially seemed.The Overnight is an odd film. Funny, but odd. I suppose in terms of genre it’s closest to those awful British sex comedies from the seventies. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Kurt and his wife are swingers, and try very hard to convince Alex and Emily to join in their fun. I did have fun while watching it, and it does have a lot of pretty funny moments, mostly because the dialogue is very clever and well-written. There are some odd transitions where the tone fluctuates between scenes with amusing hijinks and scenes which are supposed to make Alex and Emily (and by extension, the viewer) uncomfortable. When I saw this at the Somerville Theatre, it was in their massive theatre number one with a very large crowd. It was stretched all the way around the building in fact, I imagine because everyone had heard that Jason Schwartzman was in it. The crowd was really into the film, and riotously laughed through almost any scene. The Overnight is one of those films, I feel, that if I had seen it by myself I would have thought “meh” and probably have not liked it very much. But because of the crowd, I enjoyed it much more than I otherwise would have. If you and a few friends want to see an awful American sex comedy, by all means see this movie. Otherwise, I would say this one is a pass; there’s lot of stuff playing at IFFB that I would recommend higher than this. Unless of course you want to see Jason Schwartzman’s dick, in which case this movie will happily oblige. Grade: B with a good group, otherwise C-

They Look Like People

Christian (Evan Dumouchel) is just a regular guy: he gets up and goes to work every day, he works out at the gym (a habit developed during high school is dissuade bullies) and keeps trying to work up the courage to act on the crush he’s developed on his boss (Margaret Ying Drake). This is until one day when Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), an old childhood friend, shows up on his doorstep completely out of the blue. Although Wyatt dodges most of the questions he asks about where he’s been and what he’s been doing, Christian takes him in since it seems like he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. As the two of them rekindle the friendship that had dwindled over the years, it soon becomes apparent that Wyatt is struggling with much more than the average millennial. A chilling physiological horror, They Look Like People is a terrifying picture of what it feels like to struggle with schizophrenia. The writer and director, Perry Blackshear, was at the festival and conducted a Q&A after the screening concluded. He said that a several of his close friends and family had struggled with the disease, and he wanted to try to convey to audiences via the screen the terror they felt on a daily basis. They Look Like People is one of those slow-burn horrors which relies on subtlety and silence in order to build tension. And boy does it build tension, often to unbearable levels; by the end of the movie you start wanting it to explode into violence and action just to release tension, but it just continues its slow and steady pressure cooker. The acting and writing is frequently uneven, with many scenes making it aware that both the director and actors are not terribly experienced. However, the scenes that are done well just shine; there’s one heart-touching scene where after deciding to go out to a bar, Christian and Wyatt just end up staying at home and doing the same silly things they did when they were in middle-school (BLOB WARS!!). Scenes like these humanize the characters to a much greater degree than is typically seen in horror movies. This adds to the film’s greatest strength: its realism. I walked out of the theatre thinking: “Jesus Christ, now I know what it’s like to have schizophrenia.” This is scarier than any film about monsters, aliens, or serial killers, because these are demons that some people really do have to fight. Grade: A-

This article is part of NUFEC’s ongoing coverage of the Independent Film Festival Boston.

LOST CONQUEST, as described by Director Mike Scholtz, “often feels like a low-rent, real-life Game of Thrones, if that sort of thing appeals to you.” That is appealing, but I assure you that it doesn’t feel much like Game of Thrones and–even if it had–that wouldn’t have kept me in my seat. The most exciting part of this film is, thankfully, the meatiest part: interviews with puzzlingly genuine, thoughtful, and warm people that respectfully held differing beliefs.

The film, on the surface, explores the the debate surrounding a supposed secret Viking invasion of America 1000 years ago. Some people believe Minnesota was an area where Vikings settled, while most experts disagree. Many of those interviewed had an opinion on whether the supposed Viking artifacts discovered hundreds of years ago were real or fake; but nearly all of them came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter much whether the artifacts were authentic. No one debates whether people of Scandinavian descent should live in Minnesota; the debate centers on whether they have historical precedence to exist on the land, and whether those who believe in the Viking invasion are doing so to–subconsciously or otherwise–feel more at home in Minnesota. Watching this film to decide who is right or wrong would be a waste of time. The film really isn’t about whether the Vikings came to Minnesota in the 1300s; it’s about what it means to hold debated beliefs. The film wonderfully explores what it means to feel as if you belong in a certain place; it explores why people would want to find historical precedence for their existence on a certain plot of land. What does it mean to believe in a history that cannot be proven? What does it mean to derive meaning from a story not because you actually believe the origins of it but because you and those who raised you have believed it for so long that you actually don’t care whether it’s true or not? If you’ll go on believing it either way, is the debate worthwhile? These conversations naturally extend far beyond the debate over the Viking invasion and manage to stir thoughts about holding many beliefs, especially as they relate to religion.

I was shocked at this film’s ability to resonate without fantastic camerawork; at times I even felt dizzied by the zoom outs and unexplained cuts to footage of “off duty” Viking reenactors eating Pop-Tarts and laughing with each other. But I kept getting sucked back in by the surprisingly poetic approach people took when explaining their beliefs. Those who believed that the Vikings lived in Minnesota were often the first to ask: “Who actually cares if they did?” This somewhat dismissive comment should not be mistaken for apathy; rather, the interview subjects often portrayed palpable passion for the subject while showing little concern about potentially being wrong. They candidly conveyed what they believed and how they came to believe it, often while demonstrating incredible awareness of their personal biases.This is a film you will get as much out of as you want; if you'd like to just watch people laugh as they film scenes reenacting the Viking landing, you'll be pleased. If you want to dive into a mental discussion on belief structures, there's plenty of room in the deep end.

You won’t come to LOST CONQUEST for the jarring camerawork, and you won’t stay for the location-based scene breaks; instead, you should come for the unique scenery of a largely friendly historical debate, and you should stay for the sincere, unpretentious thoughtfulness of the subjects. A film featuring Viking reenactments and small town squabbles could easily feel trite and mocking, but LOST CONQUEST balances the genuine intrigue of the interviewees with an examination of what it means to hold divisive beliefs in a most appealing manner.

Grade: B

LOST CONQUEST’s world premiere will occur at IFFBoston on Saturday at 5:15pm. Tickets can be found here.

Hm, what can I say about Ross Katz’s Adult Beginners? It was cute. Nick Kroll stars as Jake, a player in the tech industry whose career is just about to explode. The film opens with a striking initial impression of Jake: an infomercial where he delivers information about his newest invention, the hottest investment item on the market. However, shortly after, during a New York City high-life cocaine-laden party, a prior mistake completely upends Jake’s career, leaving him with no money, one friend, and nowhere to live. The one remotely positive thing that comes from it: a convenient excuse to move back to his childhood home in the suburbs, where his sister Justine (Rose Byrne) lives with her husband Danny (Bobby Cannavale) and young son, Teddy (Caleb and Matthew Paddock, who are literally the cutest boys on the face of the planet). As Jake encounters difficulties with making friends, defining success, finding his place in his old neighborhood, struggles with harnessing his ability to responsibly care for Teddy, (i.e. someone other than himself) and debates the best way to navigate loyalty when it comes to a marital affair, he slowly matures while tearing down the affected charades of the other adults around him, proving that no one has really got it all together any of the time no matter their age. He grows up through having to handle questions of morality and what’s truly important in life: career and prestige, or family and love. While all of the acting is good, Rose Byrne easily stands out as the stellar performance of the movie: her portrayal of the tired, fed-up, slightly crazed, yet slightly hopeful pregnant Justine is brazenly real and emotional, further cementing her comedic credibility. Nick Kroll’s affable nature makes for a good man-child, though Katz seemed to rely too heavily on him to completely carry the subtle humor and emotional content to a poignantly deep place. The film is nicely funny, with no bells or whistles. It’s what you would expect out of a comedy produced by the Duplass brothers. It was calm, warm, and fuzzy, with slightly off-beat humor and truthfully fresh portrayals of the highs and lows of life and humanity. It’s not their best though, nor their smartest, wittiest, or most unique. But it’s not particularly bad either. I guess, my biggest critique of the movie is that it is completely forgettable. The movie is about finding yourself, no matter at what stage of life, redefining yourself and starting over when you need to, not being afraid to be an adult beginner. However, with its tepid humor, trite metaphors, and too tidily wrapped-up ending, the film failed at leaving a lasting impression of any kind and at making any sort of considerable impact.

Before we talk about this series, we should talk about the subgenre of anime known as “Magical Girl” series. Both the characters and the genre itself are known in Japanese as mahou shoujo (literally “magical girl”). A magical girl is, as the name suggests, a young girl (usually between the ages of 10 and 16) who has certain magical abilities which both help and hinder her life. The subgenre descends, surprisingly, from the 1960s American sitcom Bewitched, which featured a witch named Samantha trying to live a normal life as a suburban housewife despite having magical powers. The show turned out to be tremendously popular with Japanese teenage girls, and with various alterations the manga and anime industries absorbed the idea to create the magical girl subgenre. The magical girl subgenre intersects with numerous other anime genres; most series are classified as a subset of more general fantasy, but others fall into the range of sitcoms, dramas, and occasionally even sci-fi. Magical girl series can range widely in content; many follow a similar plot as Bewitched, with its characters trying to live normal lives despite their powers. Other series, especially since the popular Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was released in 2003, have drifted in a more action-orientated direction, forming the “Magical Girl Warrior” style. Generally speaking though, magical girl series fall into the shoujo demographic (ie, aimed towards younger girls). As such, most of them tend to have characters who are dressed in frilly pink costumes, have some sort of cute animal sidekick, and fight using the powers of friendship and love; the kind of thing that most parents would be okay with having their little girls watching. As I discussed in a previous article, I don’t really watch any shoujo anime because generally speaking characters dressed in frilly pink dresses and fighting with the powers of friendship and love don’t appeal to me very much. However, magical girl series frequently do have large periphery demographics of viewers who are not little girls. This is part of the reason why more action-orientated magical girl series have become popular in recent years. However, it wasn’t until 2011, with the release by Studio Shaft of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, that the genre was turned on its head so badly that it may never recover. Kaname Madoka is an ordinary high school girl living in the futuristic metropolis of Mitakihara. She has a loving family and a best friend named Miki Sayaka. Her mundane life changes the day an unusual transfer student named Akemi Homura transfers into Madoka’s class; Homura acts as if she has met Madoka before, and the mystery is compounded by the fact the Madoka dreamed of Homura before meeting her. Later that day at the mall, Madoka and Sayaka run into Homura again, who is attacking a strange, furry creature. They rescue the bizarre (but cute) animal from Homura’s aggression, but are soon attacked themselves by horrifying monsters. In the nick of time they are rescued by an upperclassmen from their school, a girl named Tomoe Mami. She reveals herself and Homura to be Magical Girls, who use their powers to battle monsters named Witches which feed on and spread negative emotions. The creature they rescued, Kyubey, offers to make Madoka and Sayaka Magical Girls as well. Kyubey says that Madoka has more magical potential than any other girl he has ever met, and in exchange for fighting the witches he will grant her any wish she desires. This sounds like a fairly ordinary premise for a fantasy series, and the show is fairly ordinary at first. This, combined with the show’s opening animation featuring Madoka’s silly hijinks as a Magical Girl with happy music playing in the background, might be enough to trick you into thinking this is a standard Magical Girl series. However, what on the surface appears to be a cute show for little girls about magic and the importance of friendship quickly reveals itself to be something very different. In reality, Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a dark, twisted tale of darkness, madness, and despair. Much like Neon Genesis Evangelion did for mecha anime, Madoka Magica brutally deconstructs the magical girl genre, showing the logical consequences of all the tropes present in the genre. Yes, all of the teenage girls have wondrous magical powers. But in exchange for that power, they are forsworn to a life of conflict and violence, fighting monstrous entities which are quite literally incarnations of madness and despair capable of driving their friends and family to commit murder or suicide (the Witches themselves look like they were animated by Terry Gilliam while he was on a really bad acid trip). Yes, the girls get a wish granted in exchange for this, but there's nothing that says they have to wish for something positive. Even if they do wish for something positive, that wish may very well come back to bite them in ways they never intended. Yes, there is a cute, furry creature which grants them this power. But most of them never stop to ask why they are being granted this power, or if the cute creature has any ulterior motives. And when I say they have to fight witches, I mean that quite literally, with all the violence and blood and potential death that entails. Many of the characters die, often in gruesome and horrible ways. It should be ominous to say that Puella Magi Madoka Magica was primarily inspired by the German epic Faust, about a man who tries to make a deal with the Devil in exchange for magical power (hint: it doesn’t end well for him in most versions of the tale). It should also be ominous to say that this series was written by Urobuchi Gen, the writer of Fate/Zero who has gained the nickname “Urobutcher” for his habit of brutally killing off his casts, and believe me, he earned his nickname for Madoka Magica. What makes this so twisted is how Urobuchi shows how, in reality, a happy magical girl series which runs on the power of friendship and magic would degenerate into a cosmic horror story which would have H.P. Lovecraft shaking in his boots. For example, one of the main themes in Madoka Magica is how being a selfless heroine is not only impractical, it’s actually impossible. All of the characters are initially empowered by what seem like selfless, idealistic wishes. However, as time goes on, the series exposes how most of these wishes aren’t actually selfless at all, and how the cognitive dissonance between their perceived purity and actual selfishness only leads to greater despair. Even the wishes that are genuinely selfless only lead to greater pain in the end, as they backfire in ways that were never expected, leaving the girls bitter and broken. Other major themes include the high cost of hope and the inevitability of despair. Puella Magi Madoka Magica was a massive commercial and critical success; never before had someone deconstructed the very concept of the magical girl series so completely. The show gained a huge following because of its combination of utter darkness, adorable girls with magical powers and cute outfits, and pervasive despair. The combination is bizarre and wonderfully perverse, creating a show which is depressing, cute, and downright horrifying all at the same time. If you can accept all of that, then maybe you are fit to be a magical girl.

The Big Lebowski is one of my all-time favorites because it is just the weirdest, quirkiest movie I have ever seen. On paper, The Big Lebowski is a crime drama featuring the kidnapping of the trophy wife of a wealthy industrialist. However, this movie is really more of a black comedy following the inanities of a hippie out of time.

The Big Lebowski follows the travels and travails of Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) preferably known as “the Dude” (or Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing). The Dude is a lazy Californian hippie who really only loves three things: smoking weed, going bowling with his buddies, and drinking beers with his bros. The Dude’s rather peaceful lifestyle is interrupted one day when thugs break into his home, and begin destroying his property, demanding the ransom for his kidnapped wife Bunny (Tara Reid). The Dude, who is not married, soon realizes that he is in the middle of a huge mix up: the thugs were after the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the titular Big Lebowski, a multimillionaire and self-proclaimed business icon (David Huddleston). Furious over the loss of his rug to the thugs, the Dude marches over to Big Lebowski’s house to demand recompense. The Big Lebowski entrusts the Dude to deliver the ransom, and from there the Dude becomes embroiled in an unfortunate series of events that involves a gang of German nihilists, a pet marmot, and an anarcho-feminist memorably played by Julianne Moore.

What makes The Big Lebowski so hilarious and remarkable is not its plot but rather it’s amazing characters. The plot is actually rather non-cohesive, with the Dude just bumbling from one ridiculous situation to another, with very little direction. The Dude is the archetypical hippie who hates the “square community.” He seems to live an almost ascetic-like lifestyle, living in a very modest home with few belongings, performing tai chi in the mornings, and meditatively listening to whale calls while taking a bath. The Dude is joined by his friends, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi). Walter is a Vietnam War veteran who manages to bring up the Vietnam War in nearly every conversation he participates in. Walter has a hot temper, yet is very book smart, able to extensively quote historical figures such as Lenin and religious texts such as the Talmud, and is a devout Jew, despite the fact that he was raised an Irish Catholic. Donny is the quietest member of the group who often unintentionally provokes Walter’s wrath by interrupting him. These three friends for an eccentric little group that makes its way through the ludicrous events in the movie.

The Big Lebowski is really a collection of vignettes, following a one crazy hippie through one of the strangest series of events ever put on film. The best part of the film is watching colorful characters react to crazy situations, such as a naked women flying on tightropes flinging paint on a canvas. Through it all the Dude is unfazed, keeping his undying sense of optimism for a calmer tomorrow. In an age of franchise, sequels and reboots, The Big Lebowski is a delightfully unique indie gem that should not be forgotten.

Alex Garland, the writer and director of the new movie Ex Machina, graciously sat down with a few other college bloggers and me to discuss his latest work. We covered everything from Oscar Isaac’s secret talent for dance to Garland’s complete distaste for auteur theory…

There seems to be a huge film noir influence in the movie.

Oh, sure. Um, here’s the thing. Ok, when you offer up a story – and I learned this way back. I’ve been writing for a long time, nearly 20 years. First thing I did is I wrote a book about backpackers just coming out of their teenage years. It was about young Western backpackers in Southeast Asia. They were kind of treating Southeast Asia as if it were some kind of adult-themed Disneyland, right? And it was supposed to be a critique of the backpacker scene. And when it came out, people saw it as a straight satirization of the backpacker scene. And I realized, you don’t have any control over narratives. It’s about what people bring to them. They have their own agendas. And you know, one of the examples I always think of is lawyers and judges, who spend their life trying to get the meaning of sentences that were written to be as clear as possible, and yet, they’re open to interpretation and ambiguity. So, imagine the exponential amount of complexity [that exists] within a narrative. So, here’s the thing: it’s not from my point of view. That’s your point of view. That’s fine. If you want to see it that way, that’s your prerogative, that’s what you brought to the narrative. I don’t see it as a femme fatale story, because I see it as a prison break movie. And I don’t see it as war. I don’t see it as war at all. In again, the types that would attach femme fatale as a sort of conceptual thing. From my point of view, it depends on where you position yourself within the story. I position myself next to the machine. The machine is stuck in a glass box. She’s been given weird kinds of things to tell her there’s an external world that she could access, and maybe a concrete knowledge that she’s proceeded by other machines, and a knowledge that if she doesn’t do things right, things might end up badly for her. Then there’s this guy who is her jailer, who’s keeping her in prison. And this guy’s friend. So, what’s a femme fatale? She’s got to get out. It’s a prison break movie. But it depends where you choose to position yourselves. I’m only answering that from my point of view. I’m not disagreeing with your knowledge of film history or anything, it’s not that.

No, I love that response. I just saw a connection between Ava and Rachel from Bladerunner.

Bladerunner is consciously and deliberately echoing film noir techniques the whole way through. Shot composition, even in the music, which alludes to earlier periods of time, so but, not in my opinion.

So, I was kind of curious, what were the thoughts that went behind Nathan’s version of the Turing Test? What was the inspiration for his version of the Turing Test?

Actually, it’s exactly what is expressed in the film, which is that if you set up this- there’s two things: one is, if you set up this experiment, as per the quote unquote rules of the Turing Test, should pause, so what’s the point? The question is not can she trick you into thinking that she is a human if you are hearing a disembodied voice while typing into a computer and getting text responses, which is how the Turing Test usually works. It’s if you see she’s a machine, do you feel she’s sentient. So, it’s sort of a post-Turing Test Turing Test. That said, the Turing Test is misrepresented a lot of the time. The Turing Test is not actually a test for sentience. It’s really a test for the Turing Test; it’s a test to see if you can pass the Turing Test, which is itself incredibly difficult to do. So, it’s representative of a very sophisticated AI, that is not representative of self-awareness. You can pass the Turing Test without – like the chess computer discussion that [Nathan and Caleb] have. A chess computer doesn’t learn it’s a chess computer. You could pass- a very sophisticated language program could pass the Turing Test without being self-aware or sentient. So, equally at dock, is it sentient and self-aware and it recognizes its reflection in the mirror and stuff like that, but could not get close to passing the Turing Test. So, it’s a little bit of a red herring. And it was partly to say, don’t get hung up on the Turing Test. Cause we are, so.

So, please tell me if I’m wrong. In the film, there seems to be a theme about the objectification of women. How much did Laura Mulvey's fetishistic gaze inform your writing of the script, if at all? And why did you decide to tackle this topic?

I’m not aware of it, so I’d have to say- that doesn’t mean I’m not affected by it because it could be, for example, the people who I was involved with, who I was talking with about the subject matter and showing them the script and asking them to critique it, they might have been affected by it. I am consciously not affected by it. I mean, in an analogous way, you could watch Apocalypse Now and be affected by Heart of Darkness, but not have read Heart of Darkness. So, the short answer is I don’t know. But I would say is that there are whole bunch of questions and propositions which are raised in the film, put forward, that is done consciously, and as consciously as possible, in sort of an aware way. And there was a responsibility, I thought, to be thoughtful about it. So, my process was to think about it as hard as I was able – as of course one has his own prejudices and limitations that one is unaware of, that’s the downside of the, you know – so, then what you do, is you test them with other people. I’ve got friends who I can show these things to and say, I want you to look at it hard from this angle and make sure it stands up and that kind of thing.

How has the story changed from its initial inception to the screenplay to the film, if at all?

Well, in some sort of fundamental respects, you could say, not much, as much as you could look at the scenes and say, well, there’s the scene, and look at the story and say, well, it’s roughly the same, although in the edit, things always get changed a little bit. But in other ways, dramatically, because the reason why I’m anti-auteur theory, and I don’t give a shit about it, and I don’t want to walk towards it, I want to walk away from it, is because the point about all of these pyramid structures that exist within the overall film, is that when the DOP’s good, and when the actor’s good, and they’re given responsibility, they make it better. They elevate it. They come up with something I didn’t think of. So, to micro-manage it would be a mistake because it would be less good. So, the short answer is, the changes, that it’s a better version of what I thought it might be because of the people I worked with who have their own inspirations and skill sets and talents that I don’t. So, that, I guess.

I think the unexpected joy about this movie that the marketing doesn’t touch on is that it’s very funny. It’s a very funny movie.

I hope so! I hope so.

And I think that’s such a difference in the other things that I’ve seen that you’ve written, that was kind of a separator, in a sense.

There’s always – maybe not Never Let Me Go, that one’s kind of grim – there’s usually a kind of humor in them, a sort of dry humor. And then what happens – talking about elevating, actually – you give that material to Oscar Isaac, he’ll fucking run with it. And he’s like, he’s a very funny guy. He’s witty, he has sort of a mercurial sort of humor. And Domhnall Gleeson is hilarious really. Actually, Domhnall is kind of like a comedian: if you put him in front of an audience, it’s like stand up. And so, if there’s a gag, dry humor particularly, it can land or not land according to the delivery. And Oscar can get every bit of blood out of the stone.

Was that a part of the reason why you chose those two particular cast members for those particular roles?

I just chose them because they were brilliant actors. Domhnall, this is the third movie that we’ve worked on together, and Oscar, I’d seen him in a bunch of things and seen how he’s got this particular kind of confidence. And he vanishes. He just vanishes. There’s this guy in one film, and you think you’ve got the measure of him, then he’s not there anymore. Someone else is there. The name’s the same, but the guy is gone somehow. So, it’s that. That’s why they got casted. It’s like, one of the real pleasures in Oscar was finding out how funny he is, and how good he was at dancing.

I love that scene. It was so good. It was one of the best scenes of the film.

...I know that you mentioned that your emotional position was closer to Ava. And I think when I was watching the movie, my emotional position was closer to Caleb. Initially, it felt like Ava was this sort of other, this alien. And all the robots Nathan made were female. And I wondered, is that sort of a comment on the way men see women, in the tech industry especially?

What it is, is so many things are conflated into the answer to that question. That it’s difficult to settle on one and give a pat answer. But one thing would be that given some of the concerns of the film and some of the agendas of the film, it simply would have been inaccurate to the world to have reversed the genders. So, that could relate to the tech industry, or in a completely separate way, it could relate to the objectification of early in their early 20s. I mean, and the two are not actually connected. The tech industry is not dominated by men because of the objectification of women in their early 20s. They’re two separate things that coexist. And also, women are not just objectified by men. They’re also objectified by women. And so there’s tons of stuff that layer into it. One of the things that I got most interested in and that I used to puzzle over a lot – which is presented really in the middle of the film, in a conversation – is to do with gender. It’s just simply to do with gender. So, where does gender reside? Is it in consciousness, or is it in a physical form? Cause consciousness is not a physical form, it comes out of a physical thing, the brain, but consciousness is obviously something else. And is there such a thing as a male consciousness and a female consciousness. If so, how would you demonstrate it? Are there things that a woman would think that a man wouldn’t? Can you give an example? Can you find a man that would then contradict that because he doesn’t think it, and there’s a women that does? And so it goes on. And these are all the sort of implicit questions. And there was another thing as well, which is if you flip the genders in your mind, if you give it a thought experiment, which is to flip the genders and say, I’m not going to care whether this is accurate in the world or care about what it represents or anything like that, I’m just going to flip them. I would argue that you would get a very, very misogynistic film, if you did that. You’d get a misogynistic film that was not saying anything accurate about the way the world works. So, that would be another reason to not flip the genders. So, that’s from my point of view. It’s about proximity. You might not agree with that because of where you position yourself within the film. And if you position yourself with Caleb, some of those arguments might not make sense. It’s complex. But like I said, if you’re going to do something contentious, do it thoughtfully, and then understand that people have their own opinions.

So, we talked about the two other stars, but obviously, at least I think the big, breakout star here is Alicia. I’ve seen her in other things before, but what was it about her? What were the things that really convinced you on her for this movie? Because I think she’s really, really great in it.

It was the same with all of them. The thing about this film right- so, you’ve seen it, right? So, it’s an actor’s movie. It’s got a huge requirement on the way it’s shot, and vfx, and music and all that stuff. These are all like the legs of the table, as people phrase it, but, more than anything, it’s an actor’s movie. So, the way acting works, and the most of the way film finance works, is you can get things set up with actors who are not necessarily very good actors, but they’ve got a huge profile, they’ve got enormous charisma. And there are some kinds of films where charisma is what’s needed to make the film. It actually works. The dazzling smile and the sort of cheeky wink, that’s all you need, right? And in this case, it’s absolutely not what the film needs; they have to be actors. So, they were cast primarily just as actors. I’d seen Alicia Vikander in this film called The Moral Affair. She’s acting opposite a very charismatic and very gifted actor. And yet, she’s carrying the movie. Now, whenever you see that, you note it. And you don’t need to work in the film industry to note it. I have met nobody, literally nobody who would argue to me that Philip Seymour Hoffman was a bad actor. He’s a good actor. You can see it. And actually you can see it in Alicia, as well. So, that’s why she was cast. But then, subsequently, I found out in a conversation with her that she had this ballet training. She had actually worked as a ballerina at a very high level from a very young age. And that’s actually also true of Sonoya, who played Kyoko. Both of them were ballerinas. And that enabled a kind of slightly preternatural control over physicality that gave the machines a sort of otherness. Which I think is also to us, not as machines, and not as ballet dancers, seductive. I don’t mean in a sort of eroticized way. I mean, seductive as in it makes you lean forward, you know, because you’re intrigued by this strange sort of semi-perfection that none of us really have, actually, they don’t have, either because they’re humans, too. But they do the performance, and the performance has a supernatural quality.

So, why the name Ava? Is there a deeper meaning behind it?

Yes, sort of. Sort of. It was a two-step process. One is, when I first configured this in my head, it was Eve. I thought I was going to call her Eve. But it’s too prosaic, just too on the nose. And I thought, I can’t do that. And then, I thought of Eva, but I thought, I can’t do Eva because my daughter’s called Eva, and that would just be too weird given the way the film plays out, it’s too creepy. And so then, it was actually my wife, said Ava. And the thing about Ava that was nice is that is has sort of a relationship with Eve, but it’s a step removed. And it looks like it’s an acronym. It stands for Automatic Vehicle Assurance, or something, I’m not sure what it stands for. But you know, so it felt- but it’s got this sort of roughly Judeo-Christian type background.

There were all Bible names, weren’t they?

They were. But it’s unconscious, apart from with Ava. Somebody – this is so like that thing about other people watching your film – a journalist back in the UK, this very smart woman that I’ve spoken to before, said, I assume that Nathan is this, and Caleb is that, and laid out this beautiful, elegant argument that none of which was true. And I sort of thought- I had a moment, it was like a test, I could have gone, yes, that’s exactly right. But I didn’t. I took the honest route. Tempted.

Much of Clouds of Sils Maria takes place physically far from the land of celebrity gossip, tantrums, and stardom in the serene mountains; yet, it manages to intimately unpack the nature of celebrity and dissection thereof through the eyes of three very differing female perspectives (Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloë Grace Moretz) and through expert direction of Olivier Assayas.

Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is a beloved middle-aged actress who just lost a life-long friend, for whom she credits her rise to fame; he cast her in a famous romantic lesbian drama play he wrote and directed 20 years ago when she was only 19. When she is soon after offered the part of the older woman in the play, whom she never identified with during the first run, Maria and her assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), struggle with the implications. She also cautiously believes the play's director, who asserts that the young starlet person playing her first part, Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz), will take the role as seriously as she did.

In the information age of 20-somethings, admiration of a celebrity no longer stems from the celebrity's work; younger people often admire personal qualities of an actor or actress, which they then project upon any character that celebrity portrays. Of course, admiring personal qualities is nothing new to 40-somethings, but access to the breadth and depth of personality traits and pervasive media around celebrities is new. Seeing the many TMZ videos of Jo-Ann's arrests and her numerous under-the-influence videos, Valentine admires Jo-Ann's tenacity to "be herself" at such a young age in an obsessive culture. Jo-Ann's take on her constant surveillance by the press is more apathetic; she hates them but knows she can't get away. When Maria and Valentine see a sci-fi blockbuster starring Jo-Ann Ellis, Valentine sees a strong female character; Maria sees a silly action star in a film with little substance. Prior to the film, she knows only bits and pieces about Jo-Ann; she doubles over laughing when Valentine suggests that Jo-Ann's sci-fi character is anything more than a blockbuster-friendly, substance-less alien. Yet, afterwards Maria cannot resist looking up more information about Jo-Ann; her photos, her TMZ arrest videos, her under-the-influence interviews. All were available to her before, but until those around her pay more attention to the other celebrity than to her she will not care enough to look them up.

Their differing interpretations mirror the disagreement that develops around Maria's character in the play revival. Maria interprets the older woman as an enduringly sad, devoid of backbone, and struggling businesswoman; nothing like the virile, manipulative vixen she played in her teens. She knows the character only as she relates to the young character she played at 19. Valentine handles the logistical nightmare of Enders' celebrity schedule, but is more importantly looked on as a friend. Valentine sees the older character as much stronger and more vulnerable, countering Maria's interpretation with a renewed vision of strength and questioning what it means to have very different interpretations of the same script.

Kristen Stewart's presence is felt even when off-screen. Her confident strength and independence smolders on the screen, despite her job being to cater to another person's needs 24/7, and when she disappears that commitment feels missing. To be clear, Binoche is a revelation. Her frustration permeates every part of her being; she truly seems to feel everything from her gut to her voice to her limbs and if she is with Valentine she feels no hesitation to allow those feelings to gush from her. She is refreshingly candid in a way that doesn't feel overplayed; she is charming even to those she hates and manages to charm the audience as well, even as she struggles through her feelings of the play.

I was truly astounded at how much I liked this film. Despite the very odd directorial choices with certain scores, jump cuts, and other transitions, it often felt like a stage play. Still, the uncapped emotions, lack of score for most of scenes with dialogue, and ease of the camera's transitions between characters in a scene mimic the way one might watch a stage play. If you're interested in unpacking a bit more about celebrity interpretations, and how they differ among non-celebrities, older celebrities, and younger celebrities, this was one of the quickest two-hour films I've seen in a while.